Second chances
by Uyanga
Summary: It was her! The girl who had haunted his dreams for so long! But how changed...An unexpected encounter in a London park gives both of them a second chance-one, at love; the other, at life


Second Chances

A/N:New, edited, beta-ed(thank you to my beta!), improved version. I apologize to all who read the old one for any permanent damage it may have inflicted. I live on reviews so, feed me!

Mark Gyrandy sat on a park bench watching people go by. There were a lot of people out today, enjoying the good weather. For him this was a typical Saturday; he didn't have a place to go unless he wished to spend the weekends working. He did work most weekends but the director of the clinic he worked at had specifically forbidden him to come to work today. "You need a life," he had said firmly. "How are you supposed to cure people of illnesses and make them feel better if you yourself are so unsociable? Go meet new people."

The trouble was, Mark wasn't very good at meeting new people. He'd always been shy, which was why he'd spent his medical school years buried in books. All his hours of studying had paid off though, he'd graduated top of his class. And at the tender age of 24 he was considered one of the best psychologists in the country. People preferred seeing him to other, more experienced doctors because of the genuine concern he showed for his patients.

However, he'd never been able to meet a woman he truly liked. He'd met a fair few, but not one of them stirred in him the feelings he'd once felt when he was younger. And none of them felt any deep attraction to him, either. His nervous chatter (often on complex, abstract subjects) and general clumsiness turned them off before he could even ask them on a first date. It was a bit depressing really, when he thought about it. He might never fall in love again. Perhaps he would grow old alone with nothing to do but work. _But I don't really care,_ he said to himself. _I enjoy what I do: helping people. I don't think I'll ever meet a girl like her again, so it's no use marrying. If anyone _ever_ wants to marry _me_, that is. It's a pity she had to transfer._

Someone sighed. A woman had come to sit on the other side of the bench.

"Hello," said Mark, trying to be sociable.

The woman gave a stiff nod. Mark noticed that she was wearing full mourning clothes. Beneath the thick black veil, her face looked tired and drawn.

"Did you come to enjoy the weather?"

The woman turned to look at him. "Not really." Her voice sounded flat and unemotional.

"Oh, sorry." He wasn't sure what was the correct way to answer.

"It's not your fault at all. It's just that it's almost June. And I don't like the summer. I don't like warm weather much."

"That's too bad. I used to love summer vacations. They were fun."

The woman, who Mark decided must be around 30, gave him a melancholy smile.

"They were, weren't they?"

She got up.

"Wait!" Mark cried. "Please don't leave on my account-"

"I was going to go anyway. I don't usually go out but I don't know what overcame me today."

The woman turned to go.

"Can I ask your name?"

She stared at him with an expressionless face.

"Agnes," she said finally.

"Good-bye Agnes." Mark called after her.

Agnes didn't respond.

…..

Three Saturdays later Mark found himself at the park again. He would come in the early morning on Saturday, read the news until lunchtime when he would buy fish and chips from a food stand, and observe the people around him until the sun set, signaling it was time for him to walk home. On Sundays he would come around midday, after church, and stay until the old caretaker shooed him out late at night. He was always reluctant to leave early on Sundays. He had something to look forward to on Saturday nights: preparing his church clothes for the next day, and his favorite radio program aired on those nights too. But Sunday evenings were long and lonely. Monday mornings couldn't come fast enough for him.

This way of spending his weekends might have become a habit that would have stuck for decades to come if it weren't for Agnes. Every time Mark had come to the park she had been here as well. If Agnes saw him, she made no effort to initiate a second contact with him. She would sit hunched on the most isolated bench in the entire park for hours on end, not even getting up to eat. Curious squirrels and low flying birds of all shapes and sizes were not enough to make her so much as shift her seat. That odd behaviour was what frightened mothers most and made them tell their children to stay away from the lady in black. It was very difficult to tell what exactly she was looking at, but Agnes would sit facing straight ahead as if all that was going on in the world was of very little interest to her. And when she walked, she shuffled along with her tattered black dress whipping in the wind, and her whole demeanor seemed to say that the poor woman had found the burden the world had placed on her shoulders too heavy to bear. Mark had never seen a more defeated looking person in his life.

Obviously, the loss which she had suffered had affected her greatly and Mark wished he could help her in some way.

This Saturday the two of them were at the park at the same time again. Mark was pretending to be bird watching while he was really looking at Agnes out of the corner of his eye.

She was sitting alone three benches away wearing her veil and black dress. Two boys were fooling around on the grass beside Agnes. The taller of the two, perhaps the older sibling, had the other in a headlock. His younger brother was trying to kick him in the shins, but the tall blond skillfully dodged him. Their laughter and jests could be heard all over the park.

Agnes suddenly got up, coming over to sit next to Mark. This surprised him, as she had avoided company of all sorts before. Nevertheless, he tried to be friendly and struck up a conversation.

"Hello. Nice to see you again."

Agnes didn't reply. Just nodded in an uninterested sort of way.

"Not to be rude, I'm just curious. You looked like you were trying to avoid those two boys."

"I was," she said frankly.

"Don't you like children?"

"I suppose I do. I just don't like siblings."

_What an odd remark_ Mark thought.

"How was your week?" Mark changed the subject.

"Well, I went to see my aunt and uncle last Thursday. They made it perfectly clear I'm not welcome right now."

"Can I ask why?'

Agnes curved her lips into a small smile as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"You _are_ inquisitive, aren't you?"

"Sorry." Mark was embarrassed. This habit of his was what turned off women the most.

"I'm just used to asking lots of questions. It might help if you talked to me though, since I'm a psychologist."

Agnes hesitated. Mark couldn't blame her. Who would be that willing to tell a perfect stranger why she was wearing mourning clothes? But Mark had a sincere desire to help this poor woman who looked so desolate, and he tried to express this through his eyes as he silently waited for the woman to make up her mind.

"I might as well," Agnes decided. "To tell the truth, I came today because I was hoping you would be here again. It is so unbearably lonely to have no one to talk to."

Mark was delighted she had chosen him as a good person to share her troubles with. It was just in his nature to want to be liked by others. But all he said was:

"I'm all ears."

She was silent, as if wanting him to say something first.

"Why don't your uncle and aunt want to see you?"

"They are grieving themselves; I must remind them of their loss."

"Oh, sorry." It seemed so obvious! He wished he weren't so slow. Another trait women despised in him.

"Never mind, keep asking, I feel better talking to you. Don't tell me you don't want to know what happened."

"I admit I am curious as to what could have happened. But I don't want to upset you."

"That's very considerate of you. Most of the men I knew weren't like you at all." And she looked at him with an expression as intense as her dead features could manage.

"So uhh, why don't you like summertime?" A lame question, but better than the last one.

"I don't like _June_. The 14th of June was the day I lost my family."

"_Whole _family?" The minute the words were out of his mouth it sounded like a horrible thing to ask but Agnes just nodded. "My parents, my brothers and sister, my cousin and three family friends. I hadn't seen them for months before the accident and I never even got to say good-bye."She closed her eyes as if to protect herself from the memories that haunted her. Indescribable pain was etched into the deep lines of her face.

"It must have been hard. I'm so sorry." His words sounded hollow and insincere in the presence of such tortured sorrow.

"I've never ridden the train since."

_The train?_

"Wait a minute; was this in the train crash of 1949 by any chance?"

He suddenly remembered listening to the news about a serious railway accident. But it was such a long time ago, almost four years now…

"Yes, it was. Terrible affair wasn't it? Over a hundred people dead... and nine of them I knew… (It's generally better to write out numbers, rather than just giving the numerals.)

"It was three weeks before Peter's birthday.

"Peter was my older brother." She explained. "I'm the second of four. I had a younger brother and sister."

"A younger brother?" he repeated. Judging by the way she said _older brother_ Mark got the impression she didn't want to talk about _him_. And he wanted her to talk about _someone_.

"Yes. Edmund was his name," said Agnes. "Honest and Just… he could tell whether someone's intentions were good or bad by simply looking at them. And he was always right too. Always, _always _right. If only I'd listened to him when-"

She broke off as if afraid she'd said too much.

"What about your sister? Were you two close?"

"We used to be. Things changed as I got older the second time."

". . ."

Agnes looked lost in thought, remembering.

_Second time? _Mark wondered.

Pretending he hadn't heard anything unusual, Mark continued in a professional tone, "Could you describe your sister for me?"

"Lucy? Well, she was Valiant and strong. So very brave too, almost like a little lioness at times. Oh she was the Queen of Queens. They called _me_ that." Agnes shook her head sorrowfully. "How I loved to be called that. How silly were they to think of me like that. How foolish was _I_ to believe them. Rabadash was the only one who knew the real me. How exact was he when he said "Susan, you Shallow Queen! Are there no women better than you?"

"Uhh… I see."

_**I heard her wrong. I heard her entire sentence wrong. There is no other explanation.**_

"Anything else?"

"We never really saw eye to eye, unfortunately. She got always along with Peter better than with me. Lucy used to ride to the wars with my brothers. Preferred to actually help out than stay home and fret with me." A shadow of a smile flickered across her face.

"Wars?' he asked, convinced he had misheard her again.

"Oh yes, wars."

She had a far away expression on her face now, talking more to herself than to him.

"Many. I was even the cause of one once. They weren't as nasty as the ones we had here. Noble, it was even considered. But still very dangerous. The countless nights I sat up, waiting, praying-"

_**I dearly hope she's alright. She seems to have been lonely for a long time.**_

"What about you older brother, Peter? What was he like?" The almost revering way she pronounced his name had made Mark want to hear Agnes talk about him. Even _if _she was saying some very odd things.

"Magnificent," she whispered. "Simply Magnificent."

Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"I told myself they were being childish and that it was silly to believe it all. I was the one being silly. I told myself it had abandoned me when in reality I had abandoned _it_. Oh how stupid I was, thinking I could relive the past and the glory of it all _that way_. Thinking I could go back to being royalty by hanging around with that crowd.

"See those despicable men fight over me in dark alleys and imagine they were kings competing in tournaments for my honor. Honor. Ha! As if I'd had any honor left by then. Attending parties and pretending it was a ball. Ridiculous! How could I forget I was not crowned Queen so I could attend _balls_!"

She was sobbing by now.

"And I want to go _home_!"

"I'll take you-"

"No _Home. _Go Home and tell Him how very sorry I am. Tell Ed and Lu they were right all along. And apologize to Peter. See Peter _finally_ look at me without disappointment in his eyes. Oh Aslan, I was wrong! It took me an eternity to figure it out, but I know I was wrong!"

And as Mark Gyrandy watched her sob her eyes out, he no longer had any doubts about this woman's sanity. Somehow he knew she was mourning the loss of a country of which she had been queen, though how he came to that conclusion he could not fathom. All he knew was that he'd felt an odd sensation when the name Aslan was mentioned. A really warm feeling, which made him feel both courageous and compassionate at the same time. He had never experienced anything like it. Who knew ordinary Mark Gyrandy would be listening to the extraordinary tale of a fallen queen in the middle of a London park?

After a while Agnes' sobs subsided and she said in a sincere voice, "Thank you for listening to me. I feel so much better, almost like my real self again. I'll go now."

At last she took off her veil and Mark finally recognized the face underneath.

"Phyllis!" he cried. It was her! The girl who had haunted his dreams for so long! But how different she looked…

The beautiful dark tresses he remembered had already grayed in places. And the eyes that had once observed the world with a haughty grandeur were red with weeping. But the wide smile she now wore was the one he knew and had come to love. It made her look twice as beautiful as before.

"Do you remember that day at the news stand? And how our schools were so close to each other? You told me your name was Phyllis-"

"Yes! I remember you now! I never forgot you, you know. Later, I often wished I'd liked boys like you better. It would have caused me and my family less grief. I don't believe you're any older than me. How did you become a psychologist so quickly?"

"I skipped two grades," he said dazedly. He couldn't believe his luck – of all the people he could run into in the wilderness of London!

She nodded approvingly. "I'd always thought you were smart. Oh, and my real name is Susan Pevensie. It's neither Phyllis nor Agnes,' she added apologetically.

"I honestly don't care what you're called!" he exclaimed. He'd been given a second chance at love and he intended to use it.

"That's a relief. I was afraid you'd be mad. Well I'd best be going now. It _was_ good to see you."

Susan offered him her hand. He shook it eagerly, desperately thinking of a way to meet her again.

"Would you like to go to church with me tomorrow?" Mark asked hurriedly, just as she was about to go.

'Thank you, but-"

She stopped, looking thoughtful.

"Yes," she said changing her mind. "Yes, I would love to go to church with you."

He grinned and Susan smiled back. It was amazing how utterly striking she looked when she smiled.

…..

Five minutes later Susan was weaving through traffic, oblivious to the screeching of tires and honking of horns. The angry curses that drivers directed at her bounced off the bubbly shield of joy that enclosed her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so ecstatic.

_I've been given a second chance,_ she thought._I've been given a chance to fix my mistakes._ For the first time in years she felt hope, and she wondered what she should wear tomorrow…Perhaps a trip to the department store was needed. Goodness knew her welfare money had accumulated. _You put in a good word for me didn't you, Lucy? Well, I won't go down the wrong path again. When Aslan sees fit for me to go, we shall meet in Narnia, dear sister, and I promise you I shall be Queen Susan once more._


End file.
